Kuzma XL AIR turntable

There is a temptation to go for florid prose here; the XL DC already set us up for ‘stentorian bass notes’ and ‘limpid pools of pellucidity’ type of gushing wordsmithery. And the XL AIR only improves upon the XL DC in every way, without undermining what made the original performance so good.

The principle difference between the XL DC and XL AIR is close to the difference between the XL DC and most other turntables. It’s more about the absence of impact on the music than the character it imparts. That holds regardless of musical genre and whether or not the recording is first-rate or something truly awful.

Most importantly, play something you know really well; ‘Come Together’ on the 50th Anniversary three-LP set of Abbey Road by The Beatles [Apple] and the years roll back. The complete control this turntable has over the music means that louche, swampy, drum riff that only Ringo Starr could perform is played with absolute precision. If that sounds like a musical paradox, one listen to the performance convinces you otherwise. You keep going until ‘The End’ (which is remarkable on a parallel tracker due to the absence of end of side distortion anyway). It’s putting you closer to four guys in a studio in St Johns Wood. However, the accuracy of the performance demands full-range systems, as it doesn’t have the artificial mid-bass sweetener of some high-end decks.

The big difference the XL AIR seems to bring is an even greater precision to speed control (as well as exceptionally fast start-up and stopping times for a platter that weighs almost as much as a Flyweight boxer). Speed accuracy is an odd thing on LP. You could argue that any reasonably well-designed belt- or (especially) direct-drive design pretty much nails speed accuracy, and past a certain point, you are merely gilding the lily. But then you hear just how precise the XL AIR gets, and you start redefining your record-playing value system. We assume speed precision is best heard with very pure voices and instrument voices because of pitch stability, but in fact, it’s more to do with the way it copes with less pure tones that highlights just how accurate this deck gets; that little tape ‘warble’ mid-way through the overture to the Pirates of Penzance [D’Oyly Carte, Decca], Lana Del Ray’s passing tones and part mumbled vocal on Norman F***ing Rockwell! [Polydor/Interscope]. They are dealt with in such a precise way, it tells you more than someone singing in perfect clarity. That kind of precision is absolute.

The turntable is such a neutral vinyl platform, it allows the differences in arms to be rendered in the sharpest focus, both in terms of similarity and difference. You understand why the XL AIR has multiple arm positions, and why so many XL AIR users use more than one arm. The turntable was honest and neutral enough to ensure the ‘order’ of the Air Line and the ‘flow’ of the 4Point 14 were rendered so accurately, it wasn’t an either/or option; the choice of the arm was a natural reaction to different records. This is not audiophilia nervosa, just the logical extension of how an arm, cartridge and record interact when the turntable is simply doing its job better than all the rest.